Herbert Baglione has...

The highly anticipated exhibit Two Broken Knees, a new series of work by Herbert Baglione, opens in London at Lazarides Gallery Greek Street this Friday, November 21st, 2008.

If you’re not yet familiar with Baglione’s work, you should be. This Brazilian artist is an established contemporary painter who draws on strong simple mural designs, extreme physical figures, and human and alien icons, rendered in the style of cave drawings. His style has influenced the vibrant street art movement in South America for at least ten years. His position as one of Brazil’s most distinctive artists has also cemented his international acclaim in the design and art worlds.

Jaded with the scene and what he saw around him, Baglione started experimenting with new ways to look at the street, using the extremes of urban architecture to create his paintings, provoking a new dialogue. The effect is both visually and psychologically arresting in its intensity.

Although his figurative subjects are ever-present, his art is constantly growing and changing, relying on a strong palette. This new work has a strong minimalism set against an elaborate calligraphy and new injection of color. In Coins and Scratched Dice, emaciated figures fall down like match stick rain; in Spit, Blood and Mud, figures hang upside down from a base of stark geometric color.

In his new body of work comprising twenty paintings in small and large scale in acrylics, enamel and varnish, Baglione uses characters that seem to bloom and reclaim life. Textures from urban dirt and scratched out typography found in big global cities that he experimented with years ago and are now integrated with his recent work on geometric patterns, fractals, religion and erotica.
Two Broken Knees marks a new phase in which the painting process has become a religious ritual in a search of faith lost in the great urban centers of the world. He uses painting, drawing and installation as new instruments, continuing to touch on subjects, which he considers provoking such as death, individualism and chaos.

Herbert Baglione started painting in the Streets of São Paulo in the beginning of the 90s. Throughout the various phases in his work in his home country, Europe and the United States, Baglione has painted alongside important names of the international graffiti scene.